- Hey, gang, this is Deke McClelland.Welcome to Deke's Techniques.This week I'm gonna show you how to take multiplephotographs captured with different depths of field.So for example, in this photo the coins fromthe ancient Roman city of Bath in England are in focusand in this one right here the placard in the backgroundis in focus instead and we're gonna auto-blend theminside Photoshop in order to create thismore flatly focused image right here.Here, lemme show you exactly how it works.

All right, here's that final blended depth of field effect.Now in order to pull this off you need at leasttwo photographs with different focus points.So in my case I have this one in which I'm focusingon this little placard which is about six inchesback inside of this display.And then I have another photo in which I'm focusingon the coins which are just a couple of inches back.Now as I say you need at least two photographs.If you have more, if anything, you'll get better results.All right, now we need to add these two photos as layersinside of a single document and to do that go up tothe File menu, choose Scripts,and choose Load Files into Stack.

Now if your images aren't already open then clickthe Browse button and locate them, but in my casethey are open so I'll just click Add Open Files.I don't want, however, to add the final comp so I'll goahead and select it and click remove to get rid of it.All right, now notice these two check boxes here.You wanna turn the first one on,Attempt to Automatically Align Source Imagesand that way the coins will be aligned withtheir background, but the second one you wannaleave off, Create Smart Object After Loading Layers.No, thank you.That will actually get in the way of our effect so leaveit off and then click Okay in order to produce this imageand now notice, by the way, if I turn off this layer,that our coins are nicely aligned.

However, we do have a problem.The images are a little bit crooked and to solve thatjust go ahead and switch to the Crop tool and thenpress and hold the Control key or the Command keyon the Mac so you can get that Straighten optionappear on the fly and just go ahead and drag alongunderneath one of these lines of text.And I found that having an angle valueof -1.0° ended upworking out nicely and you can see that's what I havein that Heads Up display above andto the right of the cursor.

All right, then go ahead and zoom out a little bitand modify your crop boundary to taste.I'm looking for a width value of about 5260 actuallyand it doesn't look like I'm gonna quite get thatbecause I am zoomed out a little too far.But that's probably good enough and the height valueit came up with is something around 3520which I just happened to nail.All right, now I'm gonna drag the image over a little bitand down so that we're cropping the image like soand then very important, make sureDelete Crop Pixels is turned off.

It seems to be on these days by default which is a littlebit insane so turn it off so that you don't get rid of anyof the extra pixels outside the canvas and then pressthe Enter key or the Return key on the Macin order to accept that change.All right, now I want my coins to be in front,the coins that are in focus so I'm gonna go aheadand drag them up the stack like so and because we'regonna have layer masks I'm gonna shorten these layernames so that we're just seeing the numbers,the numbers assigned to the original imagesin case I ever need to come back to them.All right, now click on one layer, shift click on the otherso that both of them are selected and go up tothe Edit menu and choose Auto-blend Layers.

And by default you should see stack images selected.That's what you want and we also add this check box,Seamless Tones and Colors.It's a really great feature, although,it has a drawback that you'll see, but leave it on for now.Click Okay and then wait for Photoshop to work its magic.You are gonna see a progress bar for a few momentsand then you'll see that Photoshop has automaticallymasked the in-focus portions of both of these layers,but all is not necessarily well.I'm gonna go ahead and zoom in here so thatwe can see what I'm talking about.

Notice that we have some pretty harsh edgesaround things, for example, notice how this stickright here just kinda declines into low focus at this pointand that's following the mask.If I Control Click or Command Click on one of theselayer masks, then you can see the tracing around there.These are very sharp masks by the way.They don't have soft edges so it's more probable thannot that you're gonna see some abrupt transitions.And the best way to eliminate any of thosesharp transitions is to blur the mask.

Problem is, I'll go ahead and press Control Dor Command D on the Mac to deselect the imageand then I'll Shift Click on this layer mask to turn it offand notice, I'll go ahead and zoom in hereand I hope you can see this.Notice that the image got corrected inside of the areathat it's visible, but it did not get corrected outside.I don't know why Photoshop does this because whatit means is that you can't ever go back and modifythe mask without revealing some bad stuff.So here's the solution, press Control Alt Zor Command Option Z on the Mac to back stepas many times as it takes and in my caseI'm having to do it quite a bit here.

And then I'll go ahead and zoom back outuntil you get rid of the blend.So you wanna go back to your unmasked images like so.Then again make sure that both of your layers areselected like so and return to the Edit menu and againchoose Auto-Blend Layers, but this time turn thatcheck box, Seamless Tones and Colors, off and thenclick Okay and that way Photoshop won't attempt tomodify the colors in the two images to match each other.However, as a result we really have some bad edgesnow and here's what you do to take care of that.

First of all, Shift Click on a layer maskfor the background image.You don't need it to be masked at all.You can even throw away that mask if you want toand then go up here to this image and make whateversort of modification you need tomake it more or less match.So what I'm gonna do is go up to the Layer menu,choose New Adjustment Layer and choose Levelsand I'll go ahead and call this layer Darken, let's say,and I'll turn on this check box, Use Previous Layer toCreate Clipping Mask and I'll click Okay and that waywe're affecting this layer and this layer only.

And now I'm gonna click in this middle value here inthe properties panel which is the gamma valueand then I'm gonna press Shift Down Arrowa couple of times to reduce the gamma value to 0.8.And I might tap the down arrow key a few more timesto reduce that gamma value further until I'm seeingmore or less of a match around this coin right there.So I've got a gamma value of 0.77.You might come up with something different.At which point I'll just go aheadand hide the properties panel.All right, now what you wanna do because we still havesome very choppy edges going on here,you wanna select that layer mask by clicking on it hereinside the Layers panel and actually what you wanna dois double click on it to bring back the properties panel.

And now the easiest way to blur a mask is to modifythe Feature value like so and what that's gonna allow usto do is blur the mask on the fly so we can always comeback and change our collective minds later if we like.And for my part I ended up with a Feather valueof 50 pixels like so at which point I will once againgo ahead and hide the properties paneland also press the M key to switch backto the rectangular marquee tool.And I'll press the F key a couple of times in orderto switch to the full screen mode so that we can take inthe final version of the image which features boththis placard in the background and these foregroundcoins in focus which is largely a function ofthe Auto-blend Layers command here inside Photoshop.

All right, gang, next week I havean extra special treat for you.I'm gonna show you how to assign multiple strokesand drop shadows and color overlaysand gradient overlays to any layer you likeinside a Photoshop CC 2015.Deke's Techniques, each and every week.Keep watching.

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Author

Updated

8/14/2018

Released

1/13/2011

This course is a collection of short Photoshop and Illustrator projects and creative effects that can be completed in ten minutes or less. The series is taught by computer graphics guru Deke McClelland, and presented in his signature step-by-step style. The intent is to reveal how various Photoshop and Illustrator features can be combined and leveraged in real-world examples so that they can be applied to creative projects right away.

Skill Level Intermediate

124h 51m

Duration

2,342,651

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Q: Why can't I earn a Certificate of Completion for this course?

A: We publish a new tutorial or tutorials for this course on a regular basis. We are unable to offer a Certificate of Completion because it is an ever-evolving course that is not designed to be completed. Check back often for new movies.